Comment by Aurornis

They're not being "tricked" in the way these sensational substack posts would like us to think. You're not being given some secret knowledge that the ratings agencies don't have.

The mistake throughout this comment section is to assume that the debt is functionally equivalent to Meta haven taken it on themselves, consequences and all. It's not.

Putting things in an LLC vehicle provides some protections. Both for large corporations and you and me as individuals. However if you put an asset in the LLC the lenders also know that those protections exist and will adjust terms accordingly. Meta has taken this into account, found some favorable terms, and pursued that direction.

The narrative that this is a secret loophole that lets them take on debt but also not take on debt is the substack authors doing their thing to make it more sensational than informative.